21 Responses to “What’s Another $30 Billion Among Friends?”

There really needs to be a reckoning here. The politicians won’t do it because both parties are deeply involved, so the demad has to come from the people. And we have to insist that no one is protected.

Bush, Dodd, etc, the hedge funds, the mortgage companies, Fannie and Freddie, the bankers, the insurers, reinsurers and derivative writers. All of them.

Whether intentional or not, your use of ‘friends’ in the title is quite appropriate. While supposedly AIG is the one being bailed out, in reality it is Paulson and Geithner’s buddies on Wall Street who are getting bailed out. AIG is in trouble because it doesn’t have the billions of dollars it needs to meet collateral demands from those (Wall Street) who bought CDSs from AIG, and without that collateral, those firms would have to report huge losses of their own (on top of the losses they’ve already reported)… so, let’s give AIG some billions and let AIG pay out those billions and it looks better than if Treasury and Fed officials were bailing out the Wall Street firms directly… and even better, let’s scare the public into supporting this by telling them they’re really rescuing US from disaster.

I do not disagree that the GOP needs to be the party of fiscal restraint, but Paul, who pushed for medicare expansion, more government spending, and more pork for GOP contitutents? Was that the libertarian wing of the GOP or was that Christian Conservatives who have a hankering for pork not just at Christmas and Easter?

Daleyrocks,
Actually I was paying more attention to the banks lobbying to water down or end around the coming lending regulations aspect of my link than the banks fighting forced renegotiation of mortgages aspect. As to the second point it seems like a bad idea. Didn’t someone from the mortgage industry comment on that topic back in the fall during the first round of “bail out the banks”?

This president thing really doesn’t seem to be what Barack Obama’s good at. He’s more the kind what does well in jobs where you carry around a clipboard everywhere and wear Dockers and keep Subway coupons in your wallet.